What's The Deal With Tylose?

does adding tylose powder to fondant make it into gumpaste? make it act like gumpaste? or make it just dry harder faster? and whats the ratio people use? do you just knead it in and its ready to go? I'm obviously confused I'd appreciate any info!

I make my gumpaste by adding CMC (=Tylose) to fondant. I wouldn't do it any other way. The powder makes the fondant stronger, enabling you to roll it out finer and it dries a lot faster - it turns the fondant into gumpaste.

As a general rule, one teaspoon of CMC to a big handful of fondant works fine. I vary the amount I add depending on what I'm making. Sometimes I need the gumpaste to be just a little stronger than fondant, so I only add a little powder. Sometimes I need it to be really strong, so I add more. That's the beauty of this method - you can play around with the ratio to get what you need.

If you add too much powder and your gumpaste gets too stiff, knead in more fondant. If the gumpaste isn't strong enough, add more powder. If you are going to make flowers, you want it to 'snap' when you stretch it.

I use Ron Ben-Israel's flower paste (gumpaste) recipe for flowers, but for figures and other decorations I, too, just add CMC (tylose) to fondant. I add about 1 gram CMC per 100 grams of fondant as a starting point for most things, and make adjustments from there.